THE FUTURE OF COMMERCEWON’T BUILD ITSELF.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES BECKON YOUR CUSTOMERS

Your customer’s journey to transaction is about to look completely different. From voice to virtual reality, customer touchpoints continue to multiply. Artificial intelligence can optimize the complexity, react to their feelings, and predict their desires.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES BECKON YOUR CUSTOMERS

Your customer’s journey to transaction is about to look completely different. From voice to virtual reality, customer touchpoints continue to multiply. Artificial intelligence can optimize the complexity, react to their feelings, and predict their desires.

AR, VR, VOICE ARE

NOTHING NEW TO US.

We’ve welded a team of builders with a decade of experience bringing new interfaces and experiences to life for your favorite entertainment brands (from NASCAR to Star Wars), to a team that, over 20 years, has created some of the largest and most advanced and respected commerce architectures in the world.

We’re creative business consultants more inclined to build functional experiences than PowerPoint decks.

ELEMENTS OF FUTURE COMMERCE

Augmented Reality

Through handsets and headsets, the world around us is enhanced through a digital layer, overlaying content, interpreting the environment, and enabling new modes of interaction to blur the lines between brick and mortar and ecommerce.

Mixed reality

Hololens

Apple Arkit

Daqri

Vuforia

Virtual Reality

The world around us has been replaced by synthetic environments and immersive, interactive content. While the first wave of consumer devices has reached the market, much of the adoption has been in the enterprise.

Oculus rift & gear

Vive

Playstation vr

360° video

Artificial Intelligence

The volume of data available to marketers, and services available to interact with customers, has become so complex that it’s impossible for humans to grasp at once or manage manually. Machine learning is evolving towards systems that think more like people and act independently.

Watson

Hal 9000

Microsoft Cognitive Services

Internet of Things

Microelectronics have become cheap and ubiquitous. Screens, microchips, and sensors are being embedded into just about everything from vehicles to juicers. Connected by APIs, the things around us are all talking to one another, providing incredible opportunities to bridge digital and physical worlds.

Raspberry Pi

Arduino

Conversational

The growth of messaging apps is outpacing social networks, virtual assistants are standard on smartphones, and consumer technology giants are rolling out voice appliances for the home. Natural language processing and the API economy combine in these channels to enable intuitive search and transactions.

Alexa

Google Home

SIRI

Cortana

Apple Homepod

Emotion Sensing

Sentiment analysis allows computers to quantify human emotion through video, images, text, and speech. As our feelings become data points, machines will be able to provide a more advanced level of interaction through empathy, creating digital experiences that feel more human and adapt to messaging to a customer’s emotional state.

Watson Tone Analyzer

Microsoft Emotion API

Recent Projects

HOLOGRAPHIC TOURISM WITH HOLOLENS

With our HoloLenses straight out of their boxes and two weeks to a celebration so big that U2 was dropping by, we set to work building our core development framework for the device by creating a simple holographic map of Canada’s provinces and territories with a range of entertaining facts provided by audio narration.

Using a combination of gaze and gesture controls, users can explore Canada’s quirkier, less-known history as the 3D map rearranges itself in midair. This experiment is the foundation for a holographic ecommerce experience.

AI SANTA REPLACES ELVES WITH AMAZON

Using Microsoft’s Bot Framework and LUIS natural language interface, we created a Santa chatbot that accessed Amazon’s Marketing API via Skype and Facebook Messenger. Using information about the recipient’s interests, Santa was able to provide product recommendations with links to purchase, as well as tell jokes about his elves.

While AI Santa was easily confused, he helped pave the way for a conversation over coffee.

EYES FOR ALEXA. SHE REMEMBERS YOUR FACE.

We combined the Alexa voice interface, Microsoft Facial Recognition, an iPad, and an Episerver store to evolve the coffee ordering experience. Alexa uses facial recognition to identify the customer and suggest their previous order, alternately presenting recommendations based on geographical sales data and local temperature onscreen.

Alexa chats with the customer to customize the order. On checkout, customers are presented with local news to read or regional music, and, in lieu of a robot barista, a digital Starbucks gift card is sent to their phone.

HOLOGRAPHIC TOURISM WITH HOLOLENS

With our HoloLenses straight out of their boxes and two weeks to a celebration so big that U2 was dropping by, we set to work building our core development framework for the device by creating a simple holographic map of Canada’s provinces and territories with a range of entertaining facts provided by audio narration.

Using a combination of gaze and gesture controls, users can explore Canada’s quirkier, less-known history as the 3D map rearranges itself in midair. This experiment is the foundation for a holographic ecommerce experience.

AI SANTA REPLACES ELVES WITH AMAZON

Using Microsoft’s Bot Framework and LUIS natural language interface, we created a Santa chatbot that accessed Amazon’s Marketing API via Skype and Facebook Messenger. Using information about the recipient’s interests, Santa was able to provide product recommendations with links to purchase, as well as tell jokes about his elves.

While AI Santa was easily confused, he helped pave the way for a conversation over coffee.

EYES FOR ALEXA. SHE REMEMBERS YOUR FACE.

We combined the Alexa voice interface, Microsoft Facial Recognition, an iPad, and an Episerver store to evolve the coffee ordering experience. Alexa uses facial recognition to identify the customer and suggest their previous order, alternately presenting recommendations based on geographical sales data and local temperature onscreen.

Alexa chats with the customer to customize the order. On checkout, customers are presented with local news to read or regional music, and, in lieu of a robot barista, a digital Starbucks gift card is sent to their phone.

TOOLS OF OUR TRADE

About Smith Labs

SMITH Labs is a team dedicated to moving from thought leadership to build leadership, the collective insight and experience of SMITH as a whole, and a dedicated space with two room-scale mixed-reality demonstration areas and a range of hardware enabling new interfaces.

Team members bring decades of experience in game, AR, VR, application and content development for brands including Disney, HBO, Salesforce, Wrigley, Microsoft, NASCAR, NFL, and Warner Brothers.

Ready to start?

Whether you’re thinking of an holographic store or want to create a vision for your brand’s future, we’re ready.